Mashable

John Samuel Waters was born on April 22, 1946 to a comfortable Roman Catholic family, and grew up in the Lutherville suburb of Baltimore.

From an early age, he was drawn to impropriety, staging comically violent puppet shows and taking in adult drive-in films through binoculars.

After receiving an 8mm movie camera as a 16th birthday gift from his grandmother, he began shooting his own short films around Baltimore with his friends. His first film, Hag in a Black Leather Jacket, was shot on a $30 budget and features an interracial wedding officiated by a Ku Klux Klansman.

Waters enrolled at NYU, but found that it did not suit him, and was soon expelled for smoking marijuana on campus.

He returned to Baltimore and continued making experimental films, and soon found a muse — Lutherville neighbor Harris Glenn Milstead, who had a love for dressing in drag and throwing lavish countercultural parties. Waters gave Milstead a nickname, which became his stage name: Divine.

To me, bad taste is what entertainment is all about. If someone vomits while watching one of my films, it’s like getting a standing ovation.

John Waters

Image: Waring Abbott/Getty Images

Referring to him as “the most beautiful woman in the world, almost,” Waters recognized Divine as the perfect partner to help him make “the trashiest motion pictures in cinema history.”

Divine played roles in Waters’ short films Roman Candles, Eat Your Makeup, and The Diane Linkletter Story, as well as feature-length experiments Mondo Trasho and Multiple Maniacs.

The dirty duo’s breakthrough success came with the release of Pink Flamingos at the 1972 Baltimore Film Festival. The film, in which Divine plays a character determined to claim the title of “filthiest person alive,” climaxes with him eating real dog feces. It sold out at festival screenings and soon became a cult hit.

Waters would go on to become one of the most recognizable and distinctive directors in the country, while Divine, despite an untimely death of a heart attack at age 42, would become, in the words of People magazine, the “Drag Queen of the Century.”

Image: Waring Abbott/Getty Images

Image: Waring Abbott/Getty Images

Image: Waring Abbott/Getty Images

Image: Waring Abbott/Getty Images

My porn name, if you’re supposed to take your middle name and the name of the street you grew up on, would be Samuel Clark. That’s not a very good porn name.

Visit Premier Exhibitions at 417 5th Avenue to see the past become present again at "Retronaut's New York." This pop-up exhibition of extraordinary, digitally restored photographs captures New York City at the turn of the 20th century. It's only open until May 15, so be sure to get down there before it’s gone.